Human Rights Abuses of the Peoples of Tuhoe by the NZ settler state

To show our solidarity for the kaupapa of Tino Rangatiratanga we will be assembling outside the NZ settler consulate this Waitangi Day where we will proudly display our Tino Rangatiratanga (Maori Sovereignty) flag.

The Treaty of Waitangi still remains to be honoured 168 years after its signing

The NZ Settler Governments refusal to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous peoples.

The recent human rights abuses of the peoples of Tuhoe by the NZ settler state.

Canada, Racism, Genocide, and the Bomb

Hundreds of Canadian scientists collaborated with allied scientists on the atomic bomb program, for which Canada supplied the uranium and heavy water. Canada also had representation on the Combined Policy Committee that administered the atomic bomb program. Canada’s Howe was among the committee members who approved the use of the bomb on Japan.

The uranium mine was developed by the Canadian government to satisfy US needs for the World War II effort to construct an atomic bomb. From 1942 to 1960, the Sahtugot’ine worked at the mine in Port Radium, unknowingly polluting their massive freshwater resource and irradiating themselves. In the early 1960s, the danger became apparent. The Sahtugot’ine workers started to die from lung, colon, and kidney cancers — diseases previously unknown to them.

Cindy Kenny-Gilday is a Sahtugot’ine who has worked on the issue of uranium contamination of lands and people around Sahtu. About the lethal legacy of uranium mining, she stated in 1998:

Deline [Where the water flows] is practically a village of widows, most of the men who worked as laborers have died of some form of cancer. The widows, who are traditional women were left to raise their families with no breadwinners, supporters. They were left to depend on welfare and other young men for their traditional food source. This village of young men are the first generation of men in the history of Dene on this lake to grow up without guidance from their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This cultural, economic, spiritual, emotional deprivation impact on the community is a threat to the survival of the one and only tribe on Great Bear Lake.

Declassified documents reveal that the danger from uranium was known during the mining operation. However, neither the Canadian nor US governments saw fit to make known the health dangers. The Sahtugot’ine were sacrificed for an effort that ultimately slaughtered hundreds of thousands.

Gaza – Ma’an – A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip’s only power plant began to shut down on Sunday, and the tiny coastal territory entered its third full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel’s punitive sanctions.

The Gaza Strip’s power plant will shut down by 8:00pm on Sunday because it no longer has the fuel needed to keep running. One of the plant’s two electricity-generating turbines had already shut down by noon.

This will drastically reduce output to 25 or 30 megawatts, down from the 65 megawatts the plant produces under normal conditions. By Sunday evening the plant will shut down completely, leaving large swaths of the Gaza Strip in darkness.

Omar Kittaneh, the head of the Palestine Energy Authority in Ramallah, confirmed that by tonight, the one remaining operating turbine will be powered down, and the Gaza power plant will no longer be generating any electricity at all.

“We have asked the Israeli government to reverse its decision and to supply fuel to operate the power plant”, Dr. Kittaneh said. “We have talked to the Israeli humanitarian coordination in their Ministry of Energy [National Infrastructure]. We say this is totally Israel’s responsibility, and that reducing the fuel supplies until the plant had to shut down will affect not only the electrical system but the water supply, and the entire infrastructure in Gaza – everything.”

After months of increasingly harsh sanctions, Israel imposed a total closure on the Strip’s border crossings, even preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Israeli government says the closure is punishment for an ongoing barrage of Palestinian homemade projectiles fired from the Gaza Strip.

“Famine”

180 fuel stations have shut down after Gaza residents to buy gas for cooking.

A Palestinian economist Hasan Abu Ramadan said the current humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip will be deepened by the blockade on fuel and food supplies. He warned that Gaza Strip could go from a situation of deep poverty to all out famine, disease, and malnutrition.

Abu Ramadan said that more than 80% of the Strip’s 1.5 million residents have been surviving with the help of food aid from international organizations such as UNRWA for Palestinian refugees.

International condemnation

Most international actors in the region believe there already is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs John Holmes, who said at a press conference at UNHQ in New York on Friday that “This kind of action against the people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by those rocket attacks”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed particular concern, in a statement issued later on Friday through his spokesperson, about the “decision by Israel to close the crossing points in between Gaza and Israel used for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Such action cuts off the population from much-needed fuel supplies used to pump water and generate electricity to homes and hospitals”.

The UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied territories, John Dugard, also issued a much sharper statement on Friday, saying that Israel must have foreseen the loss of life and injury to many nearby civilians when it targeted the Ministry of Interior building in Gaza City.

This, and the killings of other Palestinians during the week, plus the closures, “raise very serious questions about Israel’s respect for international law and its Commitment to the peace process”, Dugard said. He said it violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention, and one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law: that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets.

A reply to a young Indian doctor who was considering working in New Zealand

New Zealand is financially bankrupt. Do not be surprised if its currency turns out to be worthless, soon.

New Zealand is a morally bankrupt, apartheid country (little wonder most of the scum who fled South Africa after the apartheid regime was dismantled there have now settled in New Zealand -ditto the supremacist scums from other countries). New Zealand continues to dehumanize the indigenous Maori (non-white) population as well as the ‘colored’ immigrant communities systematically: Marginalize them, strip them of property, kill them.

We wondered how the ‘colored’ immigrant communities coped in New Zealand and tried to interview Navin Govind, an Indian who immigrated there. Unfortunately, he was beaten to death in his shop by three people wielding baseball bats before he could speak to us. His 11-year-old son, Sanjay, was seriously injured. Their ‘crime?’ They were ‘colored!’

We turned to Shiu Prasad who also immigrated to New Zealand from India in search of a different life, perhaps to earn a few dollars more. Unfortunately, he could not answer us either. A ‘colored’ migrant, he too was stabbed to death by a gang of racially charged youths.

Surely, Bhagubhai Vaghela, grandfather of two little girls, a qualified engineer and hard-working Indian who immigrated to New Zealand in search of his dreams could answer our questions. Alas, he was killed before we could reach him. He was shot and left bleeding to death in his place of work in Auckland because he was ‘colored.’

So were an unknown number of other non-white immigrants (and tourists) from China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea…

CASF Human Rights Team asked the NZ Ministry of Justice and several other ministries for a list of Asians who had been murdered or ‘accidentally’ killed in New Zealand in the past few years.

The Anti-Empire ReportRead this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your lifeJanuary 13, 2008by William Blumwww.killinghope.org

Defenders of the Democrats now ask: “Would Al Gore have invaded Iraq?” Maybe not. He might have invaded Iran instead; that apparently was the first choice of Israel and their American lobby. Remember that the Clinton-Gore administration imposed eight years of heartless and needless sanctions upon the people of Iraq, simultaneously bombing them hundreds of times, costing the lives of more than a million people, ruining the lives of millions more. Al Gore has already invaded Iraq. ~ Excerpt from An Unreasonable Man